How To Deal With Difficult Boss

Many people find themselves dealing with a frustrating boss at some point in their career lives. Difficult bosses vary in personality ranging from those that are rude to those who are downright abusive. In addition to making your day at work frustrating, a difficult boss can also lower your self esteem and cause you to live in constant fear. Some supervisors will be critical and cynical of everything you do hence you should know the best way to deal with a difficult boss if you are to survive in such an employment environment. Here are a number of tips to deal with a difficult boss.

Discover the Problem

You should identify what specifically you find difficult as far as working for your boss is concerned. Determine if it is an issue with your efforts going unrecognized or unclear instructions that lead to you not doing your job well. Since there could be different things that might be making working for your boss difficult, determining them will help you find a solution or a better way of dealing with the problem.

You should also make every effort to know your boss. Once you have known what the problem is, it is important to know and understand what makes your supervisor difficult. Getting an idea about the work load and pressure that your boss handles might help you relate better. You should also learn to take responsibility if the difficult relationship you have with your boss is caused by you.

Best Strategies on Handling the Problem

Communication is very essential if you are to have a fine relationship with your supervisor. It is essential to keep communication doors open, however hard it is. When assigned a job, you should start discussion and ask questions to ensure that all unclear issues are clarified. When you do your job accurately, you create a good impression and your boss will be pleased.

Harsh criticism or verbal abuse should never be reacted to with emotion, though hard. This will get you into deeper trouble because you are likely to bruise the ego of your boss. When this happens, you find yourself in an ego war with your boss and you are most likely to lose. Try as much as possible not to be personal and learn to pay no attention to small but annoying things. If your boss is a control freak or an intimidator, then never at any time try to argue with them.

Another way in which you can deal with a complicated boss is by hooking up your goals with your team’s and those of your boss. This way, there will be progress in a planned and unified manner. Besides, it ensures that your goals do not conflict with those of the supervisor, which could worsen your already difficult relationship. Once you know the goals of your boss and how to achieve them, you can work ahead towards achieving your goals.

Understand that you cannot completely change your boss. Being difficult is at times part of the boss’s personality hence do not work towards changing them to what you want them to become. Instead, consider changing the way you look at their behavior. If the relationship with your boss is still not working, you can seek the intervention of the next individual in the chain of command. However, this should be the last resort.

Damian works on Demartini method in Brisbane project. He is an internet marketing specialist and a passionate writer. Damian mostly writes about business and self development.